Latest Writing
2023
The Magic of Small Databases Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web
Digital Bricolage & Web Foraging An ongoing journey in using the web in new ways
Building a New Project in Public Working title: Figma for Knowledge Workers
2022
8 Years on the Road Getting lost and learning to steer by a new compass
What are Executive Off-Sites Good For? The Theatre of Planning
Slouching Towards Innovation The Streams, Feeds & Artifacts of Innovation Work
Generating Agency Through Blogging Blogging as economic and social opportunity
Bezier Butts Designing learning experiences to be relatable and engaging
Some Notes on Agency at Work Making sense of autonomy, control and careers
Rejecting Specialization strategy Using vibes and voice to attract the right clients
A Podia Wishlist A personal wishlist of new features
A map for indie living Phase by phase, one foot in front of the other
Subterranean Blogging Visible and invisible feedback loops
Blogging Streaks & Freaks Again and again and again
Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google A meditation on corporate frustration & autonomy
Some Notes on Executive Dashboards Command & Control & Confusion
Triple Entry Blogging ...and some thoughts on servers in the modern age
Increasing the surface area of blogging Open feeds, OPML, books, blogs and graphs
Blogging in Service of Publics Admiring The Government Digital Service in the UK
Notes on teaching & chairs Repair, tacit knowledge and memes
Notes on a Blogging Accelerator How to get more people small-b blogging?
Narrative Logs Carrier bags and courses: Making the SEO MBA log
Holding (and scrolling) attention From doomscrolling to bloomscrolling
Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick On the architecture of blogging
Electric Tables V0.2 From the web to spreadsheets and back again
Electric Tables V0.1 Experimenting with personal databases and the web as a texture
Quotebacks V1.1.4 Tweaks, fixes and full article saving
January 2022 - Map of Inquiry Open questions and areas of interest
2021
Thinking in Public with the Leaders of Consulting Podcast Consulting and blogging - what's not to like?
Talking Buy-in and Budget with Ross at Siege Media Appearing on the content and conversation podcast with Ross
Chatting Consulting with Andi Jarvis on the Eximo Podcast Independent consulting advice
7 Years on the Road The Winds of Change
The Jigsaw of Independence strategy Putting together an independent life without falling apart
Digital Victories Podcast Episode Discussing effecting change, the SEO MBA and more
Notes on an Open Scraping Database Exposing the web's data texture
Reimagining the Research Lab Musings on building an independent research lab
The Coming Era of Tokenized Essays Narrative economics and crypto-models for blogging
The Consultant Out of Time strategy Chronos & Kairos - a framework for just-in-time consulting
Why can't I write code inside my browser? Notes on rethinking browsers
2020
Filtered for... margin notes Margin notes, in-line comments and more.
Weak Ties & Strong Intros strategy How to find the “dark leads” hiding in your network to generate client work
6 Years on the Road From independence to interdependence
The Economic Power of Real-time Chat Spaces Notes on an economic model for independents
Podcasts with Offline Rocks & Hundreds of Ways Some recent yakking
Further thoughts about GoodReads & the web books ecosystem Rough notes as followup to Library.json
Filtered for... inquiry vs insight And an announcement: Launching Little Futures Season 2
The Contrary Consultant strategy Embracing the fool & the power of not fitting in
What makes a good "hire me" page? Summary of the latest !& salon
Generating an alumni network for indies Musings on groups of indie consultants
re: More experiments with video calls, and what slides are for Putting words on faces
Updates to Quotebacks Web configurator and more
Some notes on Thinking in Public An evolution of my small-b-blogging thesis
The Indie Consulting Business Model Canvas V0.1 A way of thinking about your practice
Opening up in Open Spaces Reflections on my first discord-salon session & details of the next salon
Setting up a Discord Room for my Blog A cozy space for real-time chat
Quotebacks for Firefox is here! Plus a new release for Chrome
Can Calendly Unbundle NYC? How important are spontaneous coffee meetings
Navigating Power & Status strategy How to get things done inside organizations by understanding power potholes and status switching
Exploring ScrollToTextFragment Buggy af for me...
disaster! Roxy's first blog post
Introducing: Quotebacks A chrome extension to quote the web
Sparring & Tenure for Indie Consultants A guest post on Art of Gig
A Good Looking Tiddly Theme for Digital Gardens Based on the Krystal theme
The Challenges of Remote Consulting Sensemaking & context from afar...
Collective Narratives & Sensemaking in Uncertainty Launching the Yak Collective's first report
TiddlyBlink on Glitch An "open source" Roam competitor
Library JSON - A Proposal for a Decentralized Goodreads V0.1 for an experimental open bookshelf spec
After Peacetime Mental models for navigating uncertainty
The Quarantined Independent A new blogchain on surviving a global pandemic as an indie
Tap tap test Fuck it let's test it live
Of Blogs and Beacons Cozy spaces in uncertain times
My Bandcamp Blogging Bandwagon Reccs Support indie music!
Announcing- The Bandcamp Blogging Bandwagon Supporting indie artists on Bandcamp Friday March 20th
New Blogging 3 - Blog Patterns Fiddling with the deckchairs...
Narrative Strategy Thoughts on an emerging indie consulting style
Building an ebook version of Journey to the End of the Night for Erin Technical specs and lessons learned trying to make a picture book "work" on the web
2019
Blocking & Unblocking Clients strategy Generating & Co-Creating Strategy in the Theatre of Work
Optimism as an Operating System strategy Yes! And... part 2
Yes! And... strategy How to be effective in the theatre of work
Testing Webmentions Fiddling
A blog tour It's like cribs but for blogs
New Blogging 2 - Open Blogchains Minimum Viable Infrastructure
5 years on the road Thoughts on sustainable independence
Understanding Marketing Realities Making sense of modern brand marketing
Occult Ads Superstition and the industrial programmatic ad complex
Consulting Success Podcast Talking trust, networking and indie consulting
Sweathead Podcast Appearance Talking independence & identity
Workshops as Portals strategy And how to create clarity in consulting work
Networked Communities 2 - Blogging as a Social Act Musings on bringing sidewalk life to blogs
Space for Creativity Erin's Kickstarter - Journey to the End of the Night
S, M, L 1 - Wither Substack A new dual author blogchain around new media formats
New Blogging 1 - Building Blogchains New adventures in blogging and trying on blogchains for size
Help me write my book by annotating the outline Experiments in cultivating annotations on this site
The One Page Strategy Canvas Musing on working with complex systems
How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements strategy And the power of making simple, true frameworks with clients
Planting new varietals in my digital garden or, how I'm using Screenotate to grab snippets of the web for my personal wiki
Using Bookmarklets to Script Static Sites Auto-generating text snippets using a little javascript and bookmarklet magic
Blood In the Feed The uneasy experience of predatory algorithms
Integrating Annotations into a Static Blog Custom CSS, alerts and more
Blogpunk The weirdos and zeroes of blogging
Ditching Hourly Podcast Appearance Talking about The Strategic Independent
The Strategic Independent strategy How to do better work for more money, whether you're a designer, writer or strategist.
Magical Mystery Mix Love of the groove
Strange Attraction strategy How to generate leads for an independent consulting practice
I, consultant? strategy The struggle to define who you are as an independent and the promise of charging more for your work
Building a digital garden How I built myself a simple wiki using folders and files and published via Jekyll
Exploring the UX of web-annotations Looking at Hypothesis, Genius and Google Docs
Weird Work Wisdom from Venkatesh
2018
Ways of Seeing strategy How to recognize and understand culture inside a client's organization
Four Years on the Road Sustainability, Independence & The Unknown
Who do I know in the kids book publishing world? Erin's first illustrated book - Journey To The End Of The Night
Of Digital Streams, Campfires and Gardens Building personal learning environments across the different time horizons of information consumption
Narrative spaces maps-as-media Maps as Media Week 1
For the love of maps maps-as-media Why I'm joining the maps as media course as a satellite blogger
The power of labels strategy How naming & labels can create powerful internal and external forces for independent workers
For the record blogging A sketch of how Mozilla could save us
The Practice of Media Design An attempt to define and describe the landscape of my work
Re-booting the Malcontents Podcast and Looking for Feedback Iterating on the model
High Fidelity Consulting strategy Ideas without details and details without ideas are both risky
Community Economics & A Kitty-Turtle Hybrid From tokens to turtles
Strategy and stewardship strategy A model for retained strategy consulting
PDF Aesthetics A publishing manifesto
Thank you Seth Congrats on the new site
How to get things done strategy Two interesting frameworks for trying to get things done within an organization
Some good links From dystopia to blogging and back again - some links I've enjoyed recently
Atemporality of the Corporation strategy What time horizon does strategy work on?
Strategy is the organic flow of ideas and people strategy Some links to chew on...
Talking getting things done with Ross Hudgens & Corey Eulas A fireside chat about effecting change
Talking consulting on the Boundless podcast Chatting with Paul about the future of work and consulting
Small b blogging Network topology and the ghost of the digg homepage
The Malcontents Episode 4 & 5 About us and a focus on content careers
Who gives a shit about your content? Creating connection in a networked world
Experiments in Networked Writing What's next?
2017
Talking about careers My guest episode on Jeff's podcast
Decentralized Revenue Reading Peretti's memo with an eye to brand
The Malcontents Episode 3 How Content Works
A few notes on blogging & independent feeds On resisting hyperfeeds
The Malcontents Episode 2 All about media revenue models
The Malcontents A pilot for a thing that might become a podcast...
Intimate Marketing Don't forget to have a conversation with your audience
Privacy Glitch A digital art project exploring the relationship between the visible and invisible in media.
Three years on the road strategy A personal note on how it's all going...
Algorithmic text is exciting I want to play this one just as it came out of the neural network...
How do you measure good content? In search of a framework or process to judge editorial... quality?
00FF00 Why scrappy remixing and copy pasting is how I get around on the web
The Consultant's Grain strategy Why (their) culture eats (your) strategy for breakfast
Branding in the age of Content How is branding different for a content-first business?
The Beginner's Guide to Community Building A roundup of links and guides for thinking about and building communities online.
Context Collapse, Brands & Content Why so much content is mediocre and what to do about it.
The State of Content A survey of the landscape of the business of content in 2017
Some Interesting Media Strategy Jobs Shorter than a blog post, longer than a tweet...
The Importance of Launching Fuck yeah side projects!
2016
Some Interesting Agencies A few fresh approaches I've seen recently
A fieldguide for independent strategy consultants strategy Some collected thoughts
Every Blog Takes a Village Communities, platforms and blogs
Informal breakfast 2 For those curious about content
On Conferences Networked talking. Like blogging IRL.
Starting an informal breakfast thing Building community around content
Two years on the road strategy Thoughts from two years being self-employed
Indie Blogging & Distribution You can't divorce content and distribution
Where will the next Twitter come from? Twitter the company is in trouble, but Twitter the platform I believe will live on
Death of the Industrial Advertising Complex Two excellent videos on the future of media
A Day In the Consultant's Life strategy What do I do all day long?
Intentional Communities There's a reason this whole post is written in the disqus comments
Blogging, Not Blogging 7 ways to get back into blogging
Why I've decided not to launch a brand for my consulting work strategy Personal branding is hard but I'm making progress!
An alternative to the bullshit industrial complex Keeping the web weird
Intermodal Media ...or why Buzzfeed is dominating Facebook with silent square videos
2015
In The Future We Will All Fall Madly in Love With Our Toasters ...and why the future of the Internet of Things will be the Cute Home, not the Smart Home
You're Not Blogging, My Friend. And That's a Problem.
Google Photos for Work A sketch of a hypothetical new product from Google
Mediated Maps & Digital Blind Spots An experiment in looking at the world around me through a new lens
2014
2013
Creativity vs Innovation Innovation is implemented ideas
2012
The Art of Being Switched On Life is rich and colorful, please don’t spend it on your phone.